Russia must axe ALL aid to other countries & focus only on welfare of its own people, influential right-wing party leader demands

In the face of natural disasters and refugee crises abroad, Russians should harden their hearts and tighten their purse strings rather than handing out aid, the leader of the country’s most influential right-wing party has said.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who heads up the nationalist LDPR bloc, the third-largest in Russia’s parliament, told radio listeners on Monday that offering handouts to foreign nations was making people poorer back home. “Never, under any pretext, should we provide any assistance to anyone,” he declared during an interview with the Moscow-based Komsomolskaya Pravda station.

“We give everything to everyone,” he claimed, “and then watch how our people, millions and millions of them, live on a penny.”

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Zhirinovsky said no circumstances should be considered a pretext to giving humanitarian assistance. “If there is an earthquake, a flood, or there is a war – never, not to anyone,” he added.

The MP, whose party holds the third-largest number of seats in the country’s parliament after the governing United Russia and the Communists, also blasted past decisions to forgive loans to developing countries.

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While Russia’s state loan budget is classified, the World Bank reports Moscow has pledged nearly $900 million to an international development fund since 2007, as well as spending $279 million on projects supporting education and business development in the developing world. The country has also offered up over $400 million to tackle emerging health issues like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. War-torn Syria has also been a major beneficiary of funds.

Research by the European Parliament, however, noted that Russia lags behind world leaders in foreign aid spending like Kuwait, Luxembourg and Sweden, but ranks comparably to other “emerging donors,” such as China.

In recent months, Russia has been a key supplier of vaccines for developing nations, offering up Sputnik V at comparatively low unit cost. At the same time, it has donated thousands of doses to countries like Vietnam. A recent analysis by the New York Times found that, along with AstraZeneca's formula, the Moscow-made jab was being used by a number of poorer nations, including Pakistan and Guinea.

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